Fortean 2011: The Weird Year in Review
Via WhoForted? – one of a handful of a new generation of bloggers (Mysterious Universe, Ghost Theory, The Secret Sun and Hidden Experience spring to mind) that do justice to the impish spirit of Charles Fort.
Some strange-lights:
- Paranormal polarisation
- The Mass Exodus of the Cynical Believers
- Bigfoot Overload
- The Biggest, Weirdest, and Best of 2011 – books, podcasts, paranormal reality series’
Make the jump and start making your preparations for this year’s Mayan-tinged weirdness …
Who Haunted Betsy Bell?
Betsy Bell
An alternate reading of M.V. Ingram’s history of the infamous Bell Witch haunting suggests a sinister secret at the heart of the mystery. This from Victorian Gothic:
The visitations began with sightings of strange animals about the Bell homestead, and of a unknown girl in green swinging to the limb of a tall oak. Soon there came an unaccountable knocking about the door and exterior walls of the house, followed by scratching and gnawing sounds that searched from room to room. It assaulted the boys in the night, ripping the sheets from their beds and pulling their hair as they tried to sleep. Whenever candles were lit to investigate, they would soon hear screams coming from their sister’s room.
Betsy Bell was 12 years old in 1818 when she became the thrall of an unseen tormentor who, for some three years, relentlessly beat her, mangled her hair, pinched and pricked her…
Before War of the Worlds, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835
Lunar man-bats, unicorns, bipedal beavers and a triad of mysterious solar temples featured in a sensational hoax perpetuated by the New York Sun in 1835. This from Victorian Gothic:
Imagine that you wake up one morning, sit at your computer, and you are bombarded with links to a developing story from a major news outlet: Stephen Hawking, by making novel use of Cambridge University’s new quantum supercomputer to analyze data from SETI’s telescope array, has discerned that the universe is awash with signals from intelligent life. It reads like a regular science story, at first, but soon it is revealed that Hawking and his colleagues have tapped into an extra-terrestrial television transmission, and are even now watching, breathless, as the first, dream-like images of alien civilizations display themselves on the Q-computer’s tiny monitor.
You and your friends refresh your browsers compulsively, talking over each new description that emerges of strange alien races and the exotic…
“Shadow Land”: Memoir of a Medium
Elizabeth d’Espérance, one of the star mediums of the Victorian era, penned a fascinating memoir filled with rich descriptions of altered states and otherworldly visitations. An often-overlooked, first-person account of the 19th century seance from the perspective of the medium herself, Shadow Land is the subject of a recent review at VictorianGothic.org:
Elizabeth d’Espérance grew up in a tired old house on the East End of London, filled with dark, oak-paneled halls and desolate, forbidden rooms that compelled her to explore. “I was very fond of wandering about from one empty room to another,” she wrote,
“and of sitting with my dolls on the broad low window seats, whence I would be fetched with an exclamation of horror and wonder by our servant, who considered my liking for the haunted rooms as “uncanny” and unnatural, threatening me with the ghosts and their vengeance if I persisted in invading their domains by myself.
“I could never quite understand…
Nancy Drew and the Case of the Phantom Pooper
You’ve heard of Mothman, Spring-Heeled Jack, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Now meet the Phantom Pooper of Idaho:
2010 Ig Nobel Prizes: Whale Snot, Socks Over Shoes, And Scientists’ Beards
The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize winners (like the Nobels but better) have been announced in various categories of science. These amazing discoveries are the reason we are living in the most exciting of times. ABC News reports the results:
ENGINEERING: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin and Diane Gendron for developing a method to collect whale snot using a remote control helicopter.
TRANSPORTATION PLANNING: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi, Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker for using slime mold to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.
PHYSICS: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams and Patricia Priest for demonstrating that wearing socks on the outside of your shoes helps prevent slipping on ice.
PEACE: Richard Stephens, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston for confirming that swearing helps relieve pain.
PUBLIC HEALTH: Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews and Larry Taylor for determining that microbes cling to bearded scientists.
MANAGEMENT: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda and Cesare Garofalo for…
Uncover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ With Tim Wallace-Murphy
Below is the first five chapters of Tim Wallace-Murphy’s new book Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition available on Scribd. Here’s a quick bit about the book:
From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.
This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrights and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern…
Uncover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ This Week with Author and Freemason Tim Wallace-Murphy
If you will be in the New York-metro area this week, please come and join us for a talk and book signing for Tim Wallace-Murphy’s new book Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Please RSVP on Facebook (see links below) or if not there, then by comment on this article:
Thursday, May 6, 2010: East West Living Bookstore and Cafe
Saturday, May 8, 2010: New York Theosophical Society
Monday, May 10, 2010: Livingston Masonic Library
Whether you can make it or not, here’s the first five chapters of Hidden Wisdom available on Scribd:
From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes in Hidden Wisdom a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.
More info at www.hidden-wisdom.com.
The Black Fridays Meet Mysterious Universe’s Ben and Aaron
The Black Fridays Episode 17 — Ben Grundy and Aaron Wright
Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS
That’s right, the guys from Austrailia’s Mysterious Universe drop in to talk shop, UFO’s, the Paranormal, and all things Mysterious.
We had a wonderful time talking to those guys, and look forward to chatting again in the future! We hope you all enjoy the show.
You can learn more about Mysterious Universe at: www. mysteriousuniverse.org.
Man ‘Survives Without Food’ For 70 Years?!?
Please make up your own mind about this one. Sky News reports via Yahoo:
Indian doctors are studying a remarkable 83-year-old holy man who claims to have spent the last seven decades without food and water. Military medics hope the experiments on Prahlad Jani can help soldiers develop their survival strategies.
The long-haired and bearded yogi is under 24-hour observation by a team of 30 doctors during three weeks of tests
Serial Hoaxer Daniel Hammond Claimed He Was Raped by Whale
From News.com.au:
A brazen prankster claimed he was raped by a whale and gave his name as Ben Dover during one of many hoax calls to the emergency services.
Daniel Hammond made nuisance calls for eight months, telling busy emergency operators he lived in Doctor Who’s TARDIS.
On one occasion, he reported that his manhood fell off because he smoked too much weed and was struggling to have sex.
Another time, the lanky 21-year-old impersonated Saddam Hussein and claimed he hid a bomb on a train, a court in Sevenoaks, England, was told.
Prosecutor James Nichols said Hammond enjoyed the thrill of wasting the emergency services’ time with his bizarre and persistent tales.
The court was told that Hammond was caught when he called to report threats he claimed he was receiving, and police recognised his mobile phone number.
Croatian Teenager Wakes Up from a Coma Speaking Fluent German
From the Mail Online:
Croatian doctors are baffled after a teenage girl who fell into a mysterious coma woke up speaking fluent German.
The parents of the 13-year-old from the southern town of Knin said their daughter had only just started studying German at school and had been trying to read German books and watch German television - but had never been that good in German.
But since waking up the teenager has been unable to speak Croatian and even refused it, but communicates only in perfect German far superior to her mastery of the language she had when she was taken ill.
Split’s KB Hospital director Dujomir Marasovic said they were still trying to find out what caused the mysterious coma and why the girl has apparently forgotten how to speak Croatian.
Marasovic added: ‘You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react. Obviously we have some theories although…
NYC’s Own Superheroes
From the New York Post:
With great costumes comes great responsibility.
“Kick-Ass,” an action movie opening this week, spins a tale of average Joes becoming masked crime fighters, but New York has been home to real-life caped crusaders for years.
Gotham’s legion of real-life superheroes includes a leather-clad martial-arts expert who battles drug dealers, a masked religious hipster who feeds the homeless and an engaged pair of relationship counselors, Arjuna Ladino, 42, and Shanti Owen, 50, who don star-spangled spandex as the “Transformational Warriors” to spread the power of love.
“We are just people who really care and try to go out and make a difference,” says Chris Pollak, 25, whose alter ego, “Dark Guardian,” strikes fear in the hearts of drug peddlers in Washington Square Park. “The idea is to be this drastic example of making change in your community.”
The Staten Islander has been patrolling city streets for the last seven years, frequently…
High Weirdness at Loch Ness: Frank Searle’s Lost Second Book
Mike Dash writes on the Charles Fort Institute:
From Searle’s point of view, renown also brought the useful perk of short-lived young female assistants — he called them “Girl Fridays” — willing to share his watching duties and his bed.
There were several of these girls, one an Australian, another a Brit. A third, a Belgian named Lieve Peten, reminisced: “There was no romantic involvement, not for him, not for me, but there was a physical involvement. It sounds harsh, perhaps, but that was the Seventies, people experimented. And there was no AIDS back then.”
It seems reasonable to assume that she, and perhaps some of the other assistants recruited from small ads placed (the Glasgow Herald noted) in “parts of the country where the unemployment was high,” were more attracted to the romance of monster hunting than they were to the short, baked bean munching, prosthetic-footed (he was wounded in the war) Frank…
Disinformation’s Raymond Wiley Talks About the Georgia Guidestones on Panopticon
Panopticon — Episode 3: The Georgia Guidestones with Raymond Wiley
Website • Direct Download • RSS
In this episode, Panopticon speaks with our esteemed guest, Raymond Wiley of Disinformation, about the Georgia Guidestones: a mysterious, granite monument in northeastern Georgia.
Some think the Georgia Guidestones are a sort of ten commandments of the New World Order, and some think they’re a means of navigating a post apocalyptic world.
What do you think? Super fun and super informative!
Unexplained Sheep Attacks ‘Caused by Aliens in UFOs’
Photo: Fir0002, flagstaffotos.com.au, GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
From the Daily Telegraph:
Farmers near Shrewsbury claim to have witnessed sheep being “lasered” by unidentified light from UFOs.
They have linked the unexplained incidents, where sheep’s brains and eyes were removed, to the mysterious orange lights in the sky.
They have found sheep with “neat holes” while their brains and other internal organs were removed. Other animals have lost eyes or had their flesh “carefully stripped away”, usually on the left side.
Phil Hoyle, 53, who has spent almost a decade investigating how the livestock have died, said the UFOs were found to have roamed a 50-mile “corridor” between Shrewsbury and Powys.
Mr Hoyle and 15 members of the Animal Pathology Field Unit, claimed they witnessed UFOs at work last month while working during the night at a Welsh hill farm near Radnor Forest.
“The technology involved in these attacks is frightening,” he told The Sun.…
The Georgia Guidestones: Waiting for the End of the World
Co-Hosts of the Disinformation Podcasts, Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall, at the Georgia Guidestones
R. C. Christian is dead! The Georgia Guidestones are one of the most interesting mysteries I have ever come across. After all my interest in conspiracy theories and the occult side of things, I do not believe that there is anything wrong with this monument.
It is sad to hear that R. C. Christian has died and that people want to limit his free speech by defacing this work of great craftsmanship. From CNN:
In the beginning, there was the stone.The blue-gray vein of granite that courses through northeastern Georgia spawned jobs in the quarries and finishing sheds of Elberton, where generations of stonecutters have turned slabs of rock the size of refrigerators into statues, tombstones and tile.
And one day, it brought a visitor who gifted the town with a landmark that leaves visitors scratching their heads decades later.
The nearly…
Sitting Now Podcast Teases New TV Show
So we finally took the plunge — after a year of planning and debate and — and announced our new Sitting Now TV show. The show will initially be available on the site, and via online distros like iTunes, YouTube, and Vimeo, and then later will appear on a channel to be announced later in the year (confusing I know).
Anyway, check out this ‘teaser’ intro, and let us know what you think!
James Brown’s Body Missing?
Apparently, James Brown’s numerous other children are claiming that this story is bogus. I’ll post updates as they come across the wire.
From NME.com:
James Brown’s body has been stolen, according to his reported love child LaRhonda Pettit.
The soul legend’s body was put in a crypt after his death on Christmas Day in 2006. Since then it has been kept at his daughter Deanna’s house in South Carolina while a public mausoleum was being prepared.
Pettit has now claimed the body has gone missing. Consequently, she says she is being denied the opportunity to carry out an autopsy to determine Brown’s true cause of death, reports the Daily Mirror.
“My daddy’s body has disappeared. I have no clue where it was taken, but I need to know where,” Pettit explained.
She added: “I’m convinced his death was suspicious and I want the people responsible brought to justice. The only way to do that is to…
